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Hegel and the Rationalisation of Mysticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2010

Extract

In the preface to his Philosophy of Right Hegel maintains that a philosophy is its own time apprehended in thought. It is not the philosopher's business to create an imaginary world of his own. His task is to understand the present and actual as subsuming the past in itself, as the culmination (up to date) of a process of development.

Type
Papers
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1968

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References

page 118 note 1 Works (Glockner, 1928), vii, p. 35. This edition will be referred to in footnote references as W.

page 118 note 2 W, xv, p. 37.

page 119 note 1 With Leibniz we can already find a tendency to find an ‘inner truth’ in Christian beliefs. With Lessing, in his mature thought, this tendency is much more marked. But whereas Lessing did not think of himself as a Christian, Hegel came to think of himself as a champion of Christianity, even if it is pretty obvious that in his developed system Christianity is transformed into exoteric Hegelianism, as McTaggart puts it.

page 120 note 1 This is what Hegel understands by pantheism when he denies that he is a pantheist.

page 121 note 1 W, xv, p. 32.

page 122 note 1 Exploration into God (London, 1967), p. 141Google Scholar.

page 122 note 2 Hegel's Early Theological Writings (Chicago, 1948) p. 313.

page 122 note 3 Ibid., p. 8.

page 122 note 4 In Mysticism and Philosophy (London, 1961Google Scholar).

page 122 note 5 The Philosophy of Hegel (London, 1965), p. 103Google Scholar.

page 123 note 1 For example, if a religious mystic writes simply of an exceptional state of union between the soul and God, Hegel would see in what the mystic says a general metaphysical truth about the relation between the finite and the infinite.

page 123 note 2 W, xv, p. 228.

page 123 note 3 Ibid.

page 123 note 4 W, xv, p. 35.

page 124 note 1 Ibid., p. 37.

page 124 note 2 W, xv, p. 42.

page 126 note 1 Acts 17: 28.

page 126 note 2 W, ii, p. 24.

page 126 note 3 Ibid.

page 126 note 4 W, xvi, p. 192.

page 126 note 5 Ibid., p. 191.

page 127 note 1 W, xvi, p. 210.

page 128 note 1 W, pp. 276–313.

page 129 note 1 W, xv, p. 52.

page 129 note 2 W, xv, p. 53.

page 130 note 1 W, xv, p. 210.